


giving up the gun

by bartonbones



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Underage Drinking, author feeling way too old to be writing fic for this fandom, no betas we die like men with a flag of stream of consciousness bullshit billowing behind us, pougues taking their feelings out by punching their feelings out, unrequited love slightly also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:14:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24392629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bartonbones/pseuds/bartonbones
Summary: "How'd I get this job, anyway?""'Cause you're the best liar."So JJ practices lying. Because he’s good at it. Because when John B lists off the attributes of his friends it goes smart, beautiful, and then kleptomaniac. Except that he doesn’t, actually. JJ actually so rarely lies to anyone that when he does it sticks, except that it means the people who know the truth, John B, Kiara, Pope, they think it’s all he ever does.Because JJ is a paradox of a pretty open book who's also the quickest at thinking on his feet, and it means that sometimes he just wishes someone would fucking believe him, for once.
Relationships: but mostly they are friends who love and cherish each other, sliiiiiiight jj/kiara
Comments: 33
Kudos: 163





	1. you felt the coming wave, told me we'd all be brave

You get good at something by practicing it.

John B practices surfing every day after (and before, and _during_ ) school, and soon enough they’re talking about how they’re gunna scrape together the dimes and nickels it’s gunna take to pay for registration and a ferry to Virginia for the East Coast Surfing Championship, drunk and bright-eyed and JJ’s talking derogatorily about the bikini contest and John B’s wrinkling his nose against his hollow cheekbones and lightly tapping him across the head with a half-emptied Corona.

Kie practices all her Debate Club speeches on them all until they’re falling asleep and she’s nailing every word, accenting the right ones in a perfect, doubtless mid-atlantic accent with sharp-t _turtles_ and short-syllabled _oceans_.

(JJ doesn’t always fall asleep when he closes his eyes. He doesn’t tell anyone.)

Pope is practicing his Algebra, his History, his Biology and Chem in a dutiful, stern way, studying in the Chateau and expertly ignoring JJ and John B blasting Jimmy Buffet in the sort of Geneva Convention Acceptable ways that you torture your friends in to giving you attention when you want it.

So JJ practices lying. Because he’s good at it. Because when John B lists off the attributes of his friends it goes _smart, beautiful,_ and then _kleptomaniac_.

Except that he _doesn’t,_ actually. JJ actually so rarely lies to anyone that when he does it sticks, except that it means the people who know the truth, John B, Kiara, Pope, they think it’s all he ever does.

The first time that John B assumes he’s lying they’re 13 years old and they’re not new friends but they’re not old friends, and the sun is setting on their weenie-roast in the Chateau's backyard, and JJ really, really doesn’t want to go home.

“You know,” he says, as Big John shifts the coals around their fire with a tropical-storm fallen branch, “My curfew’s eight.”

He watches. Big John’s eyebrows shoot up and John B’s shrink. He can hear the cicadas screaming a raucous and the few cars left going winding down home on the warm April evening, the first really warm one yet, good enough for swimming and weenie roasts and forgetting that it’s a Tuesday because really, the first warm day of the season gets treated like a holiday by everyone on the island, which why he’s here on a school night without sneaking out in the first place.

“It’s like eight now,” says John B.

  
He sounds confused. It always takes John B one more second than him to catch on to schemes, but he always does. It’s why they’re friends.

“No shit,” says JJ.

“Hey,” says Big John, in a hollow and half-hearted way, as if he didn’t say _god-shit-damn-mother-fucker_ in a low tone when a spark from the wet wood popped out of the fire-pit and on to his khakis, as if JJ and John B didn’t chuckle for five minutes after at the odd, jarring order of curse words.

Big John wipes the sticky sweat from his brow and levels his eyes JJ.

“You best get, then,” he says.

And JJ’s not, actually a liar. He wasn’t then and he isn’t now. But he’s not always immediately forthright, either, so first he tries:

“You’re closer to school, anyway,” he says. He looks at John B, whose mouth is now making a crooked, conspiratorial smile. “And I _swear_ we’ll go right to bed. And we can study! For the quiz tomorrow, and—”

“JJ—”

Big John stops to think about what he’s going to say, and JJ knows enough about father-son relationships to know that John B knows what’s coming next, and enough about John B to know that it’s not good.

JJ can suddenly feel that his gambit—the classic stay-out-past-curfew-and-have-to-sleep-over bet that he loses just as often as he wins—is not panning out the way he wants, so he shifts, and he doesn’t lie.

“Seriously, Mr. R, he’s gunna beat the shit out of me if I come home late again—”

“ _JJ_ ,” says Big John, and suddenly his voice is serious and crackles along with the fire. Normally he likes Big John’s voice, it’s steady and smooth and has a crooked version of a Piedmont accent that’s perfect for telling ghost stories around the campfire.

Now, it makes his mouth go dry.

“You can’t say stuff like that about your dad just because you want to spend the night,” he says. JJ knows the act is up, but it sours in his stomach. _I’m not just saying stuff_ , he wants to say, but it opens up a can of worms if he was serious, if it was true, and he doesn’t want it opened.

No, that’s gotta—that shit’s gotta be locked up, right? Or else...then what?

It’s not always clear but it always feels like disaster, so JJ has to lie, has to stay quiet, has to keep it secret because at least he _knows_ what’s on this side of the door, right? He doesn’t know what’s on the other.

At least here, there’s John B and weenie roasts and Pope and Kiara, and school when he can give enough of an ass to go and surfing and—it’s home.

So he doesn’t defend himself, even though he wants to, but he’s not a liar.

Not really, not when he doesn’t have to be, and not to the _Routledges,_ especially not to them. He clenches his fists once and then releases them, cracks his neck and his knuckles and then nods his head.

“Alright,” he says, his voice quiet. He shoves himself off of his chair and tosses his stick—just shy of throwing it—in to the fire. “Sorry.”

He’ll sleep in the hammock tonight, then, maybe, if Dad’s not in a good mood about the whole thing. It’ll be fine.

“JJ—” says John B, and JJ turns to look at him, and John B looks honestly hurt, his big blue eyes stretched wide and his mouth turned downwards in the patented John B frown, and JJ adjusts his had and reverse-parrots a small, crooked smile back.

He has to lie, even when he doesn’t want to. But he doesn’t have to hurt his friends.

“Thanks for the kickass day, John B,” he says. He tips his hat and sends a big, friendly, toothful grin to Big John, and stretches his arms out wide. Then, with his chest puffed out and a wink, says, “You’re a coward, Mr. R.”

He runs off before he can get the reaction, swerving through neighbor’s yards and small forested areas that he’s long since memorized in order to find the smoothest, quickest and most-unobservable way home. Every few yards, he slows down, his movements filled with the heavy, unforgiving sand of dread.

He’s halfway through the bush when the smile finally drops.

-

Eventually, though, JJ learns that _everyone_ thinks he’s full of shit. At least, the Pouges do.

He can bat his eyes at his teachers, he can wink at his friend’s parents, and he can flash toothy grins at cashiers and policemen. But his friends don’t believe a goddamn word he says, and honestly?

It’s kind of getting on his fucking nerves.

“No, shit, listen, I’m telling you—” says JJ, perched on the corner of the porch-sofa, holding the brim of his hat in his hands. “I saw her on the beach like two minutes ago, with _Sarah Cameron—”_

“She wouldn’t, alright!” says Pope. His hands are wild. Pope was always the most optimistic of all of them. He was the first to accept Kiara in to the group, too, but honestly—he’d been friends with JJ longer and why would he be lying about seeing them on the beach together? “She wouldn’t ghost us to hang out with some blonde Kook, she just wouldn’t.”

“What the fuck am I getting from lying about it?”

John B points a lazy finger.

“You didn’t like her from the start,” he points out, but his voice is stretched out, lazy, kinda floats through the air and dissipates by the time it gets to them.

JJ can tell he’s not really into the conversation as much as Pope is—but whether that’s because he actually doesn’t care, because he doesn’t care about nearly as much since Big John left, because he cares a lot and he’s hiding it, or because he’s just a lot drunker off the beer they snuck out of the 7-11 in the cooler, JJ doesn’t know.

But it’s even more fucking annoying because you don’t have to be so uninvolved until you’re coming for _JJ’s_ ass and integrity, but whatever. JJ doesn’t get mad at his friends, it’s the rules—don’t mack your friends and don’t get mad at them. Both of them are easy enough rules to follow.

(Most of the time.)

“Look,” he says, throwing his cap back on, shoving the brim over his eyes so that they don’t see the annoyance, “Believe me or not, but I saw her. They were—fucking _tanning_ , or whatever, like in bikinis on towels and shit—”

“Oh, nice,” says John B, reflexively, but there’s no heat behind it.

And that’s another thing that’s annoying JJ lately. He wants to grab John B’s shoulders and be like hey, okay, so your parents are gone, _who misses ‘em?_ But he knows it’s not like that, because it’s not even like that for him.

Big John would smile sometimes, or put his hand on his shoulder without digging his nails in.

He misses Big John too.

So maybe he _actually_ wants to take John B’s shoulders and shake them and say look, _look_ , I miss him too, but you can’t live the rest of your life with one foot on the board, you gotta be all in, you gotta be on the look out, you gotta _be with me_.

But he doesn’t. Because it’s not what Pouges do, the whole confrontation thing. It’s gotta be subtle, like when Pope got a C on the pop quiz so they went fishing instead of surfing on calm quiet water and let the sun set on the problem.

If JJ actually did do that, try and coax John B back out like that, unsubtle and direct, he wouldn’t even fucking believe him.

“I’ll believe it when I see it, that’s all I’m saying,” says Pope, his palms out, defensive.

“Then get in the fuckin’ van, we’re going to the beach,” he says, jumping to his feet. They’ll go and they’ll see and they’ll believe it and pretend they’re shocked that JJ wasn’t making it up, and then—

“And then what?” asks John B. He’s just in a t-shirt and jeans and it’s the damn saddest he’s ever looked, and suddenly JJ’s back to caring about that instead of his reputation. “Let her know that we’re looking after her like a jealous ex-girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” says JJ. He’s distracted by it, now, the wrongness of it. John B’s the one who’s supposed to give him a chance, at least—to prove he wasn’t lying, to prove his plan was gunna work, to defend himself after he threw the first punch.

But he’s not. He’s barely even participating, his eyes half-lidded.

“Like, we’ll get dressed up and shit, so she knows what she’s missing—”

“ _Dress up_ ,” repeats, Pope, snorting. “Like, with what? My nice khakis? Your least-ripped Billabong tee?”

JJ flips him the bird with one hand and finishes his beer with the other in one, disgusting sip, and uses his hand to display himself and his tastefully ripped clothing.

“All my shirts are ripped, it’s how I express myself—”

“It’s how the _Kooks_ express their _anger_ when—”

“—badges of _honor_ , Pope—”

“—shove you into the ground because you called their mothers painted women—”

“—my own personal _purple hearts_ —”

“Fuck off,” says Pope, laughing, as he shoves him over, in a rare display of direct action. JJ trips a little on his feet, falling on the ground next to John B’s hammock. The grass his sharp and the dirt is cool and from the ground he can see a half-smile on John B’s face, so it’s worth the blow to his pride.

“Yeah, dude,” he says. “All that. Khaki’s, Billabongs, John B’s patented choker—”

“Choker?” asks Pope, and JJ’s grateful that he’s wearing sunglasses, because they cover the fact that he’s listening to Pope but looking straight down the barrel at John B’s face, as it loses the joy and settles back in to somewhere else, new and uncomfortable.

“Yeah, y’know, like—the bandanas and shit—”

John B turns his face away.

“Nah,” he says, at length.

JJ loses it.

He stands up, one quick, thoughtless motion, and pushes the hammock with every muscle he got using the push-up bar that hangs from Pope’s bedroom door and every box he lifts at the restaurant, so that John B not only tumbles out of it, but actually _spins_ first, and lands, limbs akimbo, sunglasses hanging indelicately off his face.

“What the fuck?”

“Shit,” says Pope.

“Enough of this shit, John B!” he says. He’s yelling it, not standing over him but near enough that he could be. “Honestly! I _know_ you’re sad, I _know_ this sucks, but you gotta—you gotta come back, alright?”

“I’m fucking— _here_! You just knocked me off—my _hammock_ because I’m _here_ , what the fuck—”

“You’re not,” he says. His eyes are stinging, and he doesn’t like it but he doesn’t stop it, either, because he needs John B to hear this, to believe it. “You—all you do is drink and stare at the sky and maybe—fucking smile at something, you barely talk, you’re not even _dressing_ like you, it’s—”

“What?” says John B. His voice is dangerous, angry. His fists are clenched. JJ swallows his own spit down a dry throat.

_“It’s pougues for one and pogues for all,” says John B, four years ago when they’re creating the rules, “We don’t fight each other.”_

“Let me get this straight, JJ,” he says, and his sunglasses are in his hand and then they’re on the ground, and Pope says something calm and collected and probably applicable, but they can barely hear him. “I have to grieve in a way that doesn’t upset you, is that it? I have just—turn around and pretend everything’s _fine_ when my life is _so far from_ fine, just so _you_ don’t feel _sad_ —?”

JJ’s a good person and he loves his friends, but he’s a human person who sometimes gets annoyed by them so his first thought isn’t apologies, it’s base and selfish and he just barely keeps it off his tongue— _why not?_ Because why not, actually, because _I do_?

His chest feels hot and tight and he wants to fight, it’s just—wrong.

_“Just Kooks?” asks JJ._

_“Oh, especially Kooks._ ”

He crosses his arms. John B is too close to him, and he’s putting his arm out, over JJ’s head on to the palm tree, and it’s angry but calculated, in an unfamiliar way, because John B is always _calculated_ , always calm, always the opposite of JJ.

He feels small. How the fuck else is he supposed to feel? But what he’s saying is true. It’s been months and there no sign of John B ever coming back, and it’s really, really starting to scare the shit out of him.

“I miss him too, man,” he says. He shrugs, his voice cracks. The tips of his shoulders meet the downbow of John B’s forearms. “I miss him too.”

“Shut up,” says John B, and he hits the tree and retracts his arm. “Shut up, you _don’t_. You're just saying that to cover up the steaming pile of shit you just said. Fucking liar.”

And what the fuck, you know? What the fuck. Maybe JJ can lie to the cops about what’s in their backpacks or lie to Pope’s dad about what the boat smells like or lie to his teachers about why his homework isn’t done, or where that bruise came from, but why, in the name of ever-living Jesus the fisherman, would he lie about _this?_

_“Agreed,”_ _says JJ, holding his hand out to shake. “I like that rule_.”

JJ hauls his fist back and connects it with John B’s jaw in ten milliseconds flat.

Later on, JJ’s icing a black eye and John B is rolling out a sore shoulder and Pope has gone home to study, citing _white people_ as a sufficient enough reason to book it. John B has taken off his shirt because of the nose bleed on it and is holding a bandana in his hand, and JJ is eyeing it carefully, trying to figure out what it means as John B sits down on the sofa, resting his elbows on his bony knees.

“I know you weren’t lying,” he says.

JJ’s heart skips in his chest, and always, _always_ , that Maybank blood, his first thought is _of fucking course I wasn’t_ , and he can’t stop it from tumbling out of his mouth, but he can strip the edge, the hurt, and the anger from it as it leaves.

“Of fucking course I wasn’t, man,” he says. “Your dad was like—the nicest adult in my whole life. I loved that son of a bitch.”

“I know you did,” says John B. He’s rolling the fabric of the bandana in his hand, making pointless, smaller folds. “He loved you too.”

It hits him, deep and unsteady in his chest.

The “loved you,” without baggage. Without excuses. Without apologies.

He tries not to let it show.

“Ha,” says JJ. “Gay.”

“Funny,” says John B, but there’s a tilt to his smile. “Does this really matter?”

He’s holding up the bandana when he asks. JJ looks at it and considers—does it? It’s just a stupid piece of fabric—a clueless one without a sense of self-reflection at that, and half the time JJ honestly thinks it looks fucking stupid and calls him out on it. But...the other half?

“It’s dumb,” he says. “You look like a Ken doll when you wear it. But it’s...you.”

John B sits with that. Maybe wondering why his entire existence as a man is boiled down to a 22-square-inch piece of cloth. Maybe wondering if JJ is right. No matter what he’s wondering, he’s not saying it, and JJ licks his lips before continuing.

“And I miss you.”

John B believes him, and loops the bandana around his neck.

-

After awhile, JJ discovers there’s kinda a great side to being full of it.

‘Cause like, he’s not really the type to keep shit inside—Maybanks aren’t—he’s always running his mouth, about Kooks and their teachers and his dad and life and being poor and shit. And a lot of the time it doesn’t really mean anything, and it just kind of gets absorbed in to the conversation, in the patient way everyone seems to disregard half of what he says—which is fine, because honestly he disregards it too, he’s just got a big mouth sometimes, he’s just angry sometimes, whatever.

But sometimes he’s not.

Sometimes he says what he means and _means_ it, and says it precisely because he knows everyone will think it’s bullshit.

Like now, when they’re sitting around a fire, and they’re passing around the bottle of rum that Kiara got them because she’s still, months later, trying to make up for her Kook year, and they’re getting loser and the waves are crashing and it’s just really, really fucking chill.

Kiara’s kinda quiet, though, all of the sudden, and JJ notices because of course he does, he’s always kind of noticed everything about his friends—he’s always kind of noticed everything about _everyone_ , that’s kind of his thing.

Besides, you know, the everything else about him.

But he notices people, and Kie is quiet, playing with the cords on her wrists, and then she’s looking evenly at all of them—John B first, then Pope, then JJ, and then she’s taking a swig out of the bottle and sighing, and JJ is watching her throat as she does so and realizing how much he’d missed this, all of them together.

“I missed you guys,” she says. “I really did.”

Damn, okay, thinks JJ. Mindreader. Spooky.

He shrugs it off and reaches his hand out, making grabbing motions for the bottle. “You know,” he says, as she passes it, “We would have invited you back all the sooner if we knew your predilection for make-up alcohol, Kie.”

“Yeah, no you wouldn’t have,” she says, a half-laugh in her voice. “I was crazy. I was like—making VSCO pre-sets, crazy.”

“Vss-cccoo,” says Pope, slow and confused. “The fuck?”

“That some kind of special Kook designer drug?” asks John B, looking incredulous.

“Ooh,” says JJ. “Gimme.”

Kie rolls her eyes.

“It’s for instagram,” she says.

“Oh,” says Pope.

JJ thinks about this. He doesn’t use Instagram much—his phone is about two editions two old to take pictures that would even post, he thinks. But when it _did_ load, and he saw the posts that Kiara was making, arm-in-arm with Sarah Cameron, at nicer fires with Sarah Cameron, hanging out at nicer restaurants with Sarah Cameron, he hated her for as long as he wasn’t looking at her.

Maybanks are like that, too. There isn’t a picture of mom in the house.

“I’d have still invited you back,” he says, shrugging. It was true. He forgave in an instant, JJ, that’s another thing people don’t give him enough credit for.

“You would _not_ have!” suddenly Kie is pitchy and laughing and incredulous. “Liar! You’re such a fucking liar. You _hated_ me.”

“I did _not_ ,” says JJ, and he’s drunk so he’s not even irritated at the accusation, just mad that she’s wrong. “I never hated you.”

“Yeah, right,” says Kiara. “Must have been someone else you made sleep in the chicken coop for initiation.”

“That’s initiation in to the inner _sanctum_ , Kie, that’s not on me, I don’t make the rules,” he says. And she didn’t even last the night! But he still let her in. It’s his turn with the Malibu and he takes a second to look at it before tilting his head and taking a smaller sip. “Nah. I had a huge crush on you. The second we met.”

That’s enough to make Kie double over with laughter, and—ok. Yeah. That...stings. JJ has to be the first to admit that he doesn’t love it, but he’s in a prison of his own design, right? Like, he knew she wouldn’t believe it, that’s the whole reason he _said_ it.

“Yeah fucking right,” she says. “Stop being a bitch or I’m going back to Kook-ville.”

JJ throws his arms out and raises a daring eyebrow, and suddenly Kie’s taking a swing, fake, her fist not even making contact with his head, and he’s throwing bottlecaps at her until she escapes to the water, and John B follows, and Pope not long before, and it’s all forgotten, the lie that isn’t.

Until it’s not.

It’s just him and Pope on the porch. Both their parents are out of town—JJ’s dad is in fuck-all-who-cares and Pope’s parents are visiting his aunt and uncle on the mainland, so they’re staying at the Chatueu, waiting for John B to hook up the tv to play a movie and make them popcorn.

They’re laughing about this parody video on Pope’s phone for a little while, then Pope’s quiet, running his fingertips over the edge of his phone case.

“Hey,” he says, and inwardly JJ cringes.

_Hey_ conversations are never good, especially not from Pope, especially not from _drunk_ Pope.

“Did you mean it?”

JJ outwardly groans. He would pretend he didn’t know, but then what was the point in that? It’d just draw the damn conversation out longer.

“‘Bout Kie?”

“Yeah.”

JJ notices his friends. It’s what he does. He knows what this is about—the way that Pope defended Kie through her entire Kook year, presets and all. The way they danced together at the last midsummers even though the boys were working it in stupid vests and bowties and Kie was wearing silk.

He clears his throat and considers his answers—JJ lies all the time and they know it, but they know he can be serious, too. Pope isn’t gunna likely get by on a half-truth, but honestly, JJ doesn’t even know what’s true anymore.

He did like her.

_That_ was a long time ago, before her Kook year, before Big John left, before a lot of things.

“You know the rules, man, no pogue on pogue—”

“Macking, whatever, I know, bro, I just—I’ve got to know if it’s true.”

There’s so many times that he looks at Kie and he looks too long. There’s so many times that she brushes his shoulder and he doesn’t want her to stop. But it’s hard, because like, that’s cool and all—but he’s fine with this. He wouldn’t push for more, and he only _mentioned_ it because Kie brought it up and he’s defensive when he gets accused of lying and shit.

He’s fine with this. He’s happy, here.

Maybanks don’t rock the boat. You rock the boat, you fall off.

So what, maybe he did have a crush when he was twelve, but like, that’s puberty and shit. And Kie was nice to him, and always worried about his bruises in a soft, different way from John B, and that’s kind of enough when you’re twelve. These days he’s just looking for ways to get out of the house and feel something other than dread, and being friends is good enough for that, more than good, actually, it’s great, and he hasn’t thought about more in so long.

In the risk free world of drunken confessions that are gunna sound like bullshit anyway, he’s totally in love with her. In the real world where he’s honestly just trying to go a day without getting the shit beaten out of him, where he’s just trying to find something else, anything else, he wouldn’t even care if she was _dating_ Sarah Cameron.

“Nah, dude,” he says. “Not anymore. I was twelve. If you wanna go for it—just, like, take it from me. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Pope is shaking his head, he’s rambling something about of course it’s not, and he’s not gunna do anything, but cool cool cool cool, right? Cool, that’s great, but yeah, nothing’s gunna happen, and JJ’s kind of half listening and half thinking, not sure if that was the truth or not, actually, and then John B walks in and they both go quiet.

Later, Pope’s sleeping on the other half of the pull-out and JJ is pointedly not. Because he’s thinking about things—about the rules, and the Pougues, and having Kie back, and whether or not he said what he said because he wanted to say it or because he wanted her to believe it.

Or because he wanted to believe it: that he could live in a world where he had crushes on people that he could actually follow through on—not one night stands with tourists or flirting with waitresses, things that kept that crucial distance between JJ as a person and JJ as a force of nature.

Pope could date Kie and it would be fine. More than fine, actually—he’d be dating up, his parents would be thrilled. They’d have parties at Kie’s restaurant with Pope’s oysters, they’d go to a nice college together with her college fund and his scholarship, they’d have this future that was so out of the realm of possibility for JJ it was almost fucking _comical_.

JJ, at a state college, holding hands and standing straight?

There was a reason Kie was laughing.

He couldn’t like Kie. Not because she was a Pogue, or because she didn’t like him back, or because Pope liked her too. He couldn’t like Kie because he couldn’t really like _anyone_ , because his priorities had to be so small in order to be achievable: food, surfing, weed, and good friends.

JJ shared the laugh, in a kind of emo, gallows humor kind of way. There was a reason he couldn’t like Kie, and it was the same reason that he stole individual cans of beer and not cases, the reason he snuck back in when dad was drunk, not high, the reason he did his Math homework but not his History papers.

Because he’s smart, because he’s _good_ at this, and he knows not to try for more than he’s going to get.


	2. you said you wouldn't flinch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one goes out to the DCS for losing their minds that john b is living alone but not giving one single thought to the fact jj is getting the shit beaten out of him on the weekly. DO BETTER

“ _ Yo soy justicia _ .” 

JJ means it for the whole pulled-over gun-point gold-stealing thing. He does. And for once, it’s all so cock-eyed and stupid and over-the-top that they actually believe that’s the whole reason JJ’s stuffing the cash in the duffel bag and again—ouch. Again—prision of his own making. Again—Maybank. 

Whatever. 

They’re not coming with and JJ’s got debts to pay so he says it, “I’ll do it by myself,” and starts to storm off and he hears John B pull back Pope and none of them are fighting him on it because this time, they don’t believe him.

They think he’s lying, that he’ll turn back and follow because he usually does, fall right back in line with all of them, with everyone, with dad. He’ll storm off and think about it and then return most of the money and show up at the Chateau with a case of beer that he bought with what he didn’t return. 

But they’re wrong. They’re dead wrong, and there’s just a hint of satisfaction in that, the way they think he won’t do it. That this was all about getting pulled over and getting a gun pulled on them—like JJ hasn’t had plenty of things pulled on him before.

No. He shrugs the back back on to his shoulder when it slags as he walks, the weight of  _ twenty-five thousand dollars _ making it slip. No, it’s not about that, and he’s not lying.

This shit’s personal. 

Cause, right, here’s the thing:

Dad before coke? Miserable, temperamental son of a bitch. 

But sometimes he’d play catch and most of the time the alcohol would put his ass to sleep after too long or at least he’d drift in and out while they rewatched Sandlot for the eightieth time because it was his favorite movie growing up so JJ made it his. And yeah, he had a mean swing, but like, it wasn’t awful. It wasn’t the worst.

JJ got by and felt fine for the most part, and there was even food on the table most of the time. 

Then cocaine had gotten involved, and—well. JJ’s lips curl in on themselves and he sets his teeth.

Then things got worse.

So yeah, maybe this is about the gold, about the raining on their parade of jubilation after they’d finally found what they were looking for, maybe it’s about the cool barrel of a gun inches away from Kiara’s temple. 

That’s what they all believe. 

But it’s not. 

It’s about learning how to fear for his life at the hands of someone who was supposed to protect it. It was working two jobs and still barely having enough to eat at the end of the week. It was the shame that followed his last name wherever he went— _ you know where I come from _ —it was the screaming matches he could hear even way out in to the bush of that son of a bitch demanding his money knowing that it came straight out of JJ’s stomach. 

It’s about—getting  _ pushed around _ .

_ Aren’t you tired? _ he asked John B, and of course it didn’t work. Because he wasn’t. Or at least, not in the same bone-aching way that JJ was, the way that followed you every decision you made, sometimes quiet and sometimes deafening. 

The way that tinged their play-fights with just a little bit of home-grown panic. 

The way that it wasn't always there but also was never gone, the way sometimes he'd be hanging out with everyone, surfing, laughing, drinking and he's so far from thinking about it, it's miles from his head, but he throws off his shirt to slink back into the ever-welcoming saltwater and Pope looks at him too long and he has to make some joke that doesn't feel right or run off quick before it's a whole thing.

And it was that motherfucker’s fault, all of it, so, yeah, bitch. An eye for and eye, a childhood and a sense of safety and not getting the shit beaten out of you every week for twenty-five thousand dollars. 

_ As though hath stealeth from me, bitch. _

In an odd turn of events, though, the rest of the Pougues are actually right this time. 

In a roundabout way, because at first he is going to use the money for the right thing, and he’s gunna handle his own shit, and it’s gunna be fine. He’s gunna do it on his own. Then his dad gets a hold of the situation and sees the money—a whole fucking lot of it his own bills, actually, and puts it in the thermos and JJ just thinks— _ shit _ .

Because either Dad’s gunna spend it or he’s gunna spend it or he’s gunna return it because how fucking stupid was he? They have all these plans in their heads like everyone in the world is just as insane as they are, but they forget, a lot of the time, that they’re still kids in the eyes of the people around them—and where the fuck is a _kid_ going to get _twenty-five thousand_ _dollars_? 

Maybe they’d let him pay off the restitution, but not before the initial investigation. 

So he’s fucked either way, essentially. And for a second, for a whole-ass second, he thinks about just letting him have it. This is the happiest Dad’s been since before Mom left and he’s proud of him and  _ there’s beer in the cooler _ . For half a minute he thinks fuck the Pougues, fuck Barry, fuck the police and the system and everything else, and maybe him and Dad’ll go buy something cool and mechanical and work on it together and they’ll just—they’ll just figure everything else out later. 

But he knows he can’t. Pougues don’t kiss each other, hit each other, or betray each other. 

(Except for when they do all of those things. But JJ does his best.)

So there’s a mad dash for the money and a jump and a push and a shove and—kicking, a hell of a lot of that. When it’s all over with, he can feel his own skin bruising, the tight hot ache of it, and it’s just kind of annoying him more than anything, he’s so keyed up. 

He hates when people are right about him. 

Maybe John B wasn’t saying  _ let him go _ because he thought JJ wouldn’t do it, just that he  _ couldn’t _ . He’s sore and aching and he knows he has a choice, now, because everyone has a choice: he can be mad at John B for not coming with him, for not being there, for getting pissy that somehow  _ JJ’s _ the one crossing all the lines when this was  _ his _ idea in the first place, and at Kiara and Pope and Sarah Cameron for being all fuckin’ judgy, he can be mad at his dad for not doing the right thing, mad at  _ himself _ for not doing the wrong thing and bashing the old fucker’s head in, he can choose to  _ feel _ all that, let it sink in and burn and fester—

Or he can just not. He can just acknowledge that it’s frustrating and let it go, because what’s the alternative? 

Run away? Go back home?

Fuck that. 

They can’t take the money to the police because they’re going to ask questions where they got it—in all honesty, they can’t take the money  _ anywhere _ reputable, because they’re going to ask how they got it (he’s slowly seeing John B’s point about it being a bad idea, which he doesn’t love) and he can’t go home. 

  
He could go to the beach, try to surf off the frustration before he went back to his friends, just to keep things as smooth as possible, but his ribs are protesting even the unsteady jolts of walking and he doesn’t really think that he’s ready to engage his core right now. 

Honestly he’d kind of kill for a bath, like the kind he took in Kiara’s house once, when there parents were gone and they smoked and Pope made some comment about JJ probably not going to the laundromat in a week and JJ, high and up for a challenge, washed his clothes and himself in the neat white porcelain. 

It was a joke, but honestly JJ hadn’t had a  _ bath _ since he was small enough to fit in a sink, and it kind of kicked ass. It sounded like a much better prospect than standing up to take a shower, anyway. 

They couldn’t spend the money anywhere reputable, his friends were mad and needed some old-fashioned Maybank sorry-I-pissed-you-off-here’s-a-pointless-thing-so-you-maybe-forget treatment, and he would actually kill to sit down someplace warm and soothing. Slowly, JJ’s steps slowed and fell in thoughtful sync, the afternoon just starting to wind down, the cool starting to come back in after it had escaped from the relentless heat of the day. 

Plenty time to get in to some harmless shenanigans before the sun set, so JJ calls a number that he’s seen his Dad call too many times before, so there’s a hot tub and lights and confessions, there’s yelling and frustration and then crying and hugging, there’s being together and being held, and then—

Then everything falls apart, and they’re driving from JJ’s house where he has just  _ willingly stolen his father’s boat _ and personally signed his own fucking death certificate. 

“How’d it go?” 

JJ’s clutching the keys to the Phantom in his hand, twirling the rusting chain between his fingers, and thinking:  _ I can never go home again. _

Music is playing through the shitty speakers, the songs probably having aired originally on the radio the year the van was also produced. Kie is in the driver’s seat and she’s chewing her lip and driving so carefully that JJ knows it’s intentional, knows it’s controlling something when you can’t control anything else, because Kie’s like that and he notices it. The sun is setting, the air conditioner is blowing out the same burning-rubber smell it always does, and JJ can never go home. 

He can never go home again because he stole his dad's boat to help his best friend escape from the police and the Dad  _ hugged _ him and John B's not coming back for weeks, if not months, so not only can he not go back to his home he can't go back to his  _ real  _ home, either.

There’s no version of home that exists now. Not since he stole the keys, and he thinks about the fact that two days ago this was all fun and interesting and exciting and just—bullshit summer stuff they always do, and now everything is fucked. Like seriously, seriously fucked. 

"What?" 

Kie is driving, so the double-take of confusion and concern has to be meated out between quick but careful glances at the road. JJ heard her, he's just doesn't know what the fuck to say back.  _ He hugged me and told me he loved me and I told him that I loved him and I’m sorry that I’m stealing his boat and I hugged him so tight it hurt my own ribs even though he was the one who busted them and I tried to kill him and he's never going to forgive me and— _

If Kiara didn't believe his school kid crush, she's  _ not _ gunna believe this. But Kie is Kie, so instead of letting it drop, like John B would, or trying again later, like Pope would, she clears her throat. 

“Was he home?” 

JJ licks his lips. He doesn’t look at her. He can’t. 

“Yeah,” he says. 

Kiara nods, accepts the information. Then she looks him up and down, looking for bruises, as if JJ wasn’t an expert at putting on a brave face, like she would be able to tell in someway that others couldn’t if there was a new bruise or a reason to be concerned. There wasn’t, now, actually, but he can’t decide if the attention is endearing or off putting, comfortable or invasive. 

He clears his throat. 

“Nothing happened, Kie,” he says. He runs his hand through his hair and shrugs once, sharp.

Kie doesn't say anything for a second, her eyes narrows, and JJ knows it's because she doesn't believe him, because she never does, because even he hardly believes it, even he stood there, shell-shocked, with his dad’s arms around his shoulders and thought  _ what the fuck _ before he hugged back. 

"You can tell me the truth," she says.Her voice is really quiet, in a way it isn’t usually, in a way that unsettles him. She sounds  _ sad _ , actually, kind of hurt, which makes JJ feel like he's failing as a friend. "Please."

He looks over at her. Her lips are pressed together in this way that they do when she’s insecure, half a frown, her eyebrows furrowed, the way she would when she was first coming back into the group after the Kook year, when she was listening to inside jokes she wasn’t inside of and not remembering events she wasn’t there for. It makes him feel bad enough for her that he tries to be honest for her.

“He hugged me,” he finds himself saying, and for some reason it feels more shameful than the bruises and welts, the small parody of intimacy, the gentleness standing in stark contrast to the rest of it. “He uh—told me he loved me.” 

“ _ What? _ ” says Kie, her turn to be shocked. JJ can’t decide if it bothers him or not that she’s surprised like that, that his dad wasn’t a piece of shit for once, that JJ didn’t get beat up, for once. Maybe it’s fair—it  _ does _ only happen once in a blue moon, that JJ comes out of a situation relatively unharmed. 

Sometimes it’s his fault. Sometimes it isn’t. 

JJ shrugs. 

“I don’t know, I guess he was like,  _ drugged _ the fuck out—” 

“JJ, you don’t have to—” she pauses, looking for the right word, and he’d be more annoyed if not for the stress and hurt written across his friend’s face as clear as day. “ _ Protect _ me, from—” 

JJ interjects. 

“Hold on, hold on a sec," he says, holding out a finger, raising his eyebrows, "I don’t  _ protect _ you.” 

He doesn’t know why the accusation bothers him so much. He  _ does _ protect Kiara, but only insofar as he protects all of his friends: he takes the fall for them, he lies for them, does whatever he can to prevent them from getting hurt. He doesn’t treat her different because she’s a girl, or because she’s fragile, or because she’s a kook, or—

Or for any reason, at all, ever. He treats her _exactly_ the same as everyone else. 

“I’m not trying to fight, JJ,” she says, suddenly calm, but calm like her careful driving: forced, controlling what she could. It's not genuine, it's forced and it is cracking at the seams in ways JJ could spot from outer space.  _ Dancing in the Dark  _ plays in the background, Bruce Springsteen providing an odd soundtrack to the conversation. “I just—you can tell me the truth. I can...I want to hear the truth. About everything.” 

JJ snorts. 

“Sure," he says, "Just where are you gunna pull an hour out of your ass to hear it all?” 

Kiara glances at the clock. It’s a five minute drive left to the Phantom, so she very clearly does  _ not _ have an hour, and she knows it, and maybe she knows, too, what a ridiculous ask this was, and maybe she can see what JJ sees, all the times he mentioned it and  _ told _ them and they ignored it because it didn’t fit, because JJ’s dramatic, and JJ talks shit, and it can’t be as bad as JJ says, right, and everyone talks like that about their parents, and he doesn’t seem to mind—

And it’s not even that he  _ does _ mind. He doesn’t. Not that much. As long as he can get out of the house and surf and give himself what he needs to cope, it’s just...life. If he wanted out he could call the DCS himself. It’s how they depend on him to lie and think it’s all he ever fucking does, until they see it themselves. 

Until he stood up in the hot tub, the bruises fresh and aching and awful, and they  _ saw _ , really saw, for once, everything they weren’t seeing before.

“Can’t you just tell me?” she asks, and JJ rolls his eyes, his palms outstretched. 

“I did tell you! I _ just _ told you!” he says. “He was fuckin’—high off something or whatever and he didn’t even know what fucking month it was, and I guess he thought we were cool, or whatever, so he hugged me and told me he loved me until he conked back out, Jesus H. Christ, Kie—” 

“Okay,  _ okay _ ,” says Kie, her voice high-pitched, “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you—” 

“Well, yeah, sometimes I’m not just running my mouth, damn. I wasn’t every other time and I’m not now.” 

Kiara sits with that, in a way that JJ knows means she got the point. He’s rarely bitter (it seems like a stupid thing to choose to be, when you could just, like, chill) but it’s hard not to be when everyone is  _ just now _ starting to give a shit about it. 

“I’m sorry,” says Kie, in a way that means  _ for everything _ . JJ is rarely bitter, and Pougues don’t fight each other so he accepts it. (It’s because she’s a Pougue, it’s the rules, not anything else, not the worried curve or her lips or the furrowed tilt to her brow or her stupid big stupid soft stupid nice eyes.)

She’s quiet for a moment, and JJ is too, because as much as talks, he knows when he can’t trust himself not to say something catastrophically stupid. 

“What’d you say back?” she asks, and JJ cringes, because he’s  _ not _ stupid. He’s a lot of things, and he’s bad at school, and he’s impulsive and emotional and ridiculous, but he’s not stupid. 

And he knows Kiara is not going to like what he did, but she’s not going to understand, either. 

He can count on one hand the number of times his dad hugged him—and it was different when Big John was alive, when he was holding JJ’s shoulders and taking him fishing, but—it’s been a fucking while, right? He’s not gunna sit there and be judged for taking it when it was offered. And maybe he shouldn't have apologized, and maybe he shouldn't have hugged back, but he wasn't apologizing like he deserved it, he was apologizing like he wished things were different, that it wasn't always all horrible and he's sorry that it's like this, he's sorry because there was something there to be sorry for, something to miss. 

He's sure Kiara wouldn't understand, would just get pointlessly worried and give him a lecture that he's not sure he could hear without tucking and rolling out of the damn van.

So he keeps his mouth shut because he doesn’t want to deal with it and focuses on Bruce Springsteen instead, because he’s comforting in a Memorial Day weekend kind of a way, in a blasting it at 2am drunk in the van kind of way, in a humming while he busts tables, kind of way, and Kiara has the  _ audacity _ to reach over to the dial and turn it down. 

JJ balks. 

“JJ—” 

"Oh, I  _ know  _ you didn't just turn down the king."

Kiara’s knuckles pressed into the ripped leather steering wheel, and her face a delightful if not slightly horrifying mix of anxiety, stress, hatred and most of all confusion. She takes an agonizing time making a left turn, tries to calibrate her brain from  _ are you okay, JJ  _ to  _ what the fuck, JJ _ , a switch he has to admit he inspires often, mostly on purpose. 

Most of all, though, she’s just kind of confused. 

"This is  _ Elvis _ ?" she looks over from the steering wheel, her face taking in the absurdity of his statement, “You  _ care  _ about Elvis?” 

Bruce Springsteen, unaware of the disrespect thrown his way from the driver, continues on — _ wanna change my hair my clothes my— _

JJ—completely aware of the disrespect—gapes, the keys hanging from his fingers momentarily, blessedly pushed to the back of his mind for a moment in favor of this  _ intensely more pressing conversation that needed to happen.  _

" _ Elvis?"  _ he says, "What the  _ fuck? _ "

"The king!" says Kiara. She throws her hands up from the steering wheel for a moment, her bracelets clattering to her elbow. "That’s Elvis! This isn't Elvis?"

"It's  _ Bruce Springsteen—" _

"What are you, 54 years old—?"

"How do you not know—" 

  
Something approaching a laugh build up in the back of his throat as he says it. It’s not all there, but it’s something, and it’s easier to force through his throat than it was a minute ago. It's better than everything else that's swimming around in his chest right now, ready to poke its ugly head out if even given the smallest, smallest chance.

"How the fuck am I going to start listening to Bruce Springteen, JJ? Just, get recommended BBQ Music from Apple—"

" _ BBQ Music _ ?" he asks, his eyebrows raised. He drops the key in to the cupholder and holds up a fist. "Oh, you wanna  _ fight  _ now, bro. _ "  _

Now he's hurt, actually, so he turns up Bruce so loud they have to start yelling to argue over him — _ can’t start a fire, can’t start a fire without— _

“Tell me how the fuck I was supposed to discover an artist from like fifty years ago!” says Kie. 

She’s driving straight, so the speed picks up. She always did have a hell of a lead foot, when she wasn’t thinking about her best friends getting beaten and thrown in to jail and murdered, or whatever. The way the treeline turns blurrier and the music is louder, the baseline  _ dum dum dum dum duh duh _ in to their chests, it’s exhilarating, but in this weird way where it almost doesn’t feel good, anymore. 

“You don’t  _ discover _ Bruce, Kiara, you  _ inherit _ him, like—like watches and old paintings and shit—” 

He’s yelling because he has to, he’s yelling because it feels good. They’re laughing but they’re not, and it’s too weird to stop, so _ close _ to being right, normal-adjecent, like they want to forget  _ so badly _ what they’re doing and where they’re going that they’re throwing themselves at it, full-speed, arguing about music and going ten miles over and 

“Who!  _ Who  _ is going to write Brue Springsteen in to their will for me, JJ? I’m not—”

“Poor like me? Bitch! Your dad wasn’t a Kook, he shouldn’t—” 

“ _ White _ like you, JJ!” she’s smiling, using the hand that’s not driving to wave over him, so that that precedence of her melanin will stand in stark contrast to JJ’s blonde-hair blue-eyed beauty. 

“Bruce Springsteen is a  _ white people thing,  _ you know damn well—”

And Kiara’s laughing, until she’s not, until suddenly, she chokes. She slams on the breaks at a stop sign and pulls over to a neighborhood road, her arms straight out at the wheel, her face staring straight ahead and her lips pressed together. 

In a different world, things keep going.

“JJ, I can’t—” 

In a different world JJ is saying  _ some things transcend racial sterotypes, Kiara! _ and Kiara is taking this opportunity to soap-box about it, and they’re all giving her a hard time about it but they’re all thinking to themselves that they’re glad there’s people in the world who give a shit, who care enough about people to try, or at least JJ is, even as he’s mouthing her off. 

In a different world Pope and John B are in the back, too drunk-high-stupid to drive, and they’re laughing and recording JJ and Kiara’s conversation and asking when the wedding is, which will shut them up, because it always does, but not after JJ says  _ in hell _ and Kiara says  _ never _ , and it doesn’t hurt because it only hurts if JJ is in a world where it’s a possibility and he’s never, ever been farther from that world than now. 

JJ reaches out and turns the radio off, and the energy is gone, which is good and terrible both at once, and then his arm hovers, between the radio and Kiara, and seeing her twisted face and her eyes glossy, he gives in and reaches over and wraps it around her shoulder. 

“I can’t act like things are normal,” she says. “I’m scared, JJ.” 

JJ buries his face in the crook of her neck, her hair scratching the back of his neck. He hugs her tighter, until he can feel her chest pressed in to his, until he ignores the uncomfortable console and shift stick and steering wheels blocking his path to her. 

“I know,” he says, because he does, because he knows it even when they’re acting like they’re not scared, because he notices his friends. He believes them and he  _ notices _ them, and he notices Kiara. “It’s gunna be okay, Kie.” 

“I’m scared it’s not,” she says. “I want to believe that, but I just—” 

She pulls away and scrubs at her face with her palms, and JJ feels miserable, because his go-to for dealing with hard feels is distraction, but there’s no distraction from this because his go-to for distraction is the one that’s going to get on his father’s stolen boat and escape the police in a few hours, the one that’s causing the feelings in the first place. 

“You really think this is going to work?” she asks. “Things are going to be okay?” 

“Yeah,” says JJ, without thinking, because he doesn’t want to think that it won’t be. Because it’s what she wants to hear. 

Kiara nods, sniffs, and looks at him. Really, really  _ looks _ .

“And you’re not scared?”

And he is, actually. He’s scared shitless. Because this  _ has _ to work, and he’s not sure it will. But it has to, because there is no world with John B, no world without John B and Pope and Kie on the beach there is no world without the Pogues and the surf and the sun and the summertime because there is no  _ JJ _ without them. 

His friends were the best of him, that’s why he’s so protective. That’s why he took the fall for Pope, why he forced John B to learn to live without his dad, why he accepted Kiara back with some simplistic, heartless negging. Because without them, what’s left of JJ? A reckless, stupid, alcoholic kid from the Cut who will grow up in to a reckless, stupid, alcoholic man from the Cut.

_ You’re gunna end up just like your dad,  _ says John B, and JJ shoves him because he doesn’t know how close he is to that, how Pope has this scholarship and JJ has a good reputation and Kiara has money and he has  _ nothing _ , just them. 

“JJ?” 

Kiara’s voice is wavering, in this way that’s taking JJ a second to figure out. He looks her over—her hands anxiously twisting her bracelets, her form oddly sat on the driver’s seat, the way it looks strange when anyone is in the driver’s seat and not driving, asking if he’s scared.

JJ realizes, from the way her eyebrows are drawn together, in a pleading kind of way, and her eyes are big, looking at him, in an expectant kind of way, that she doesn’t want him to be. 

He thinks back to the beach, which was weeks but now feels like years ago, and how he always knows what he can get away with saying, always knows what he can rattle off with his friends choosing to ignore, and how they don’t know. They act like they know him but they don’t, not always, and they don’t believe him when he’s trying to tell them the truth so maybe—

Maybe Kie will believe him when he isn’t. 

“Nah,” he says. Kiara still looks worried, like the glibness is unsettling, out of place, so he shakes his head and blinks slowly and puts his hand on Kiara’s shoulder, skin to skin. She's warm and sweaty and shaking _hard_ , JJ didn't realize how bad it was until he could feel it, reverberating through her and into him and rattling his own bones. If he wasn't sure before, about lying to her, he's certain now. 

“Kiara,” he says, looking into her eyes, thinking,  _ I can never go home again _ , “I am not scared.” 

Kiara believes him. She’s nodding and she believes him and suddenly she’s crying and saying  _ okay, okay, okay _ , and  _ it’ll be fine, you’re not scared _ , and nodding to herself and JJ is wrapping his arm around hers as she buckles herself back in. 

JJ’s heart is still beating twenty miles a second, it hasn’t stopped since he walked through his front door. But she believes him. She’s driving away and he hasn’t let go of her arm, and somehow this falls, unconscious, and his fingers are entwined in hers, and she’s holding them so hard he thinks they’ll be white when they inevitably reach for other things than each other, but she’s nodding to herself and looking less like she’s going to shake herself apart, so JJ squeezes his hand back around hers. 

He is scared. He’s scared that nothing will ever be okay again, that John B is going to get arrested, that Dad is going to kill him when he realizes the keys are gone, that  _ home _ is a word he is no longer going to be able to say. But Kiara needs him to be brave, so he says it with all the trademark Maybank bullshit he can possibly muster, and she believes it. 

It’s not the truth, but she believes it, and JJ is glad she does. She needs to.

  
And with the way the blood from her hands heats up his own, the way that warmth travels through their interlocked fingers, up his arm, across his shoulder and straight in to his chest, smoothing down the rapid  _ thump thump thump _ of his heart, maybe he can make himself believe it too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, that was all very melodramatic for no good reason other than that i wanted it to be! i hope you all enjoyed it! i REALLY enjoyed writing for JJ, so i'm hoping it's not the last thing i write for him...in the meantime, is there anything yall are dying to see? i don't normally take requests so there's no promises lol but the gang is just really really fun to write, so let me know if you have any ideas you might wanna see stolen and bastardized in to my own writing style. i know personally i am playing with an au where JJ loses hearing in one ear, ala adam parrish from the raven cycle series, but that would hopefully require a little more planning and forethought than THIS stream-of-consciousness mess. 
> 
> thanks again for reading and let me know what you think!!!

**Author's Note:**

> hey....how yall doin....so i feel like very ancient in this fandom as a hot fresh & sexy twenty-something but a week ago i was making fun of this show when i saw it on tik tok and last night i stayed up and wrote twenty pages because i was a fool. what really got me was how often they depend on JJ to lie his way out of scrapes and think he's full of shit when actually he's pretty honest with them all most of the time, even about his dad and stuff. it got me thinking more about his character and how frustrating that reputation must be, so i wrote this...this first chapter is more setting stuff up, and the next chapter is The Heavy Angst, so hope yall are looking forward.
> 
> leave me a comment, lemme know your thoughts on how an old geezer writes these actual high school students !


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